The Man in the High Castle has Everything You Could Want in a High Concept TV Series but...

[Blackrook]

The Man in the High Castle has everything you could want in a high concept TV series, but...

I watched three episodes last night, and I'm still waiting for it to get interesting.

Maybe I've had my fill of World War II movies.

This is like a World War II movie, showing all the atrocities, with the added bonus that it's all complete bullshit because none of it really happened.

And then there's this Marshal character, who is a bounty hunter, so now part of the show is like an old-time Western. The character even wears a cowboy hat.

 

[The Great Goose]

let me guess. The Japs let blacks and Jews live in their territory but the German's didn't?

It's getting sooooo boring.

 

[Blackrook]

let me guess. The Japs let blacks and Jews live in their territory but the German's didn't?

It's getting sooooo boring.

Yes, it's really as tired and hackneyed as that. On the other hand, there is a scene where the Japanese killed a Jewish family, but it is seen as an exception rather than the norm.

 

[The Great Goose]

let me guess. The Japs let blacks and Jews live in their territory but the German's didn't?

It's getting sooooo boring.

Yes, it's really as tired and hackneyed as that. On the other hand, there is a scene where the Japanese killed a Jewish family, but it is seen as an exception rather than the norm.

The Japs would've wiped out all whites too, the ones that couldn't escape to the Nazi side.

In fact the way things really would have gone, would be the Germans keeping Europe, taking Russia and the Americans beating the Japs.

 

[Montrovant]

I started the book but didn't enjoy the style. I haven't tried the TV series.

 

[Blackrook]

I finished the season and it continued to disappoint.

 

[The Great Goose]

I finished the season and it continued to disappoint.

sounds gay. you should have watched "22.11.1963"

It's awesome.

 

[Kat]

The Man in the High Castle has everything you could want in a high concept TV series, but...

I watched three episodes last night, and I'm still waiting for it to get interesting.

Maybe I've had my fill of World War II movies.

This is like a World War II movie, showing all the atrocities, with the added bonus that it's all complete bullshit because none of it really happened.

And then there's this Marshal character, who is a bounty hunter, so now part of the show is like an old-time Western. The character even wears a cowboy hat.

I have seen it all. Made a thread about it back in December.
The Man In The High Castle

I can't wait for Season 2 to come out. Season one was nominated for 16 Emmys.

Personally, I loved it. It was odd, and it kept me guessing, and trying to figure it out.

I guess it is not for everyone, but anyone that I know that has seen it, loved it.

(now that song is in my head)

 

[Kat]

I finished the season and it continued to disappoint.

Considering what it was about, how did it disappoint?? It didn't me, except it did leave me wondering ''what the heck?''. That is why I am curious to see season 2.

 

[Gracie]

Never heard of it. Is it on tv or netflix?

 

[Kat]

Amazon It is very different.

 

[Kat]

I streamed to my TV with the Fire Stick.

 

[Blackrook]

The reason that I didn't like it is because it was extremely predictable.

In the first scene, when the main character shows up and takes the truck, I knew the Nazis would arrest everyone but he would escape, and that's exactly what happened.

The Nazis were portrayed as bad, but they were not nearly as bad as the Nazis were in real life. The Nazis ground occupied Europe down in the dirt, looting all wealth, and forcing millions into slave labor camps that killed them off by slow malnutrition. In the TV show, occupied Nazi America was a pleasant place, just as wealthy and prosperous as the United States in our reality. While they mentioned that crippled people and terminally ill people are euthanized at institutions, this was the only hint that anything was different. And none of the characters seemed to really care about this, until one character finds out that his son has a nervous disorder, then he suddenly cares. Which makes him an unrealistic Nazi, because a real Nazi would be the first to ship his handicapped kid off to the death hospital.

The Japanese were also not portrayed as all that bad. They killed a Jewish family, but only because they were trying to gain information from a Jewish man. It was made clear that typically the Japanese did not persecute the Jews, or blacks, or any other non-white. This is not accurate, the Japanese were just as racist as the Nazis, and they murdered millions of Chinese because they thought of them as racial inferiors. They also raped millions of women, and they brutally abused and starved prisoners of war. None of this kind of brutality was portrayed. There was one scene where a Japanese soldier forced whites to wait behind Japanese people for taxis at an airport, that was the only hint that the Japanese were oppressive, and that's pretty mild compared to what they really did.

While there was a resistance in the show, they never explained what exactly motivated the resistance fighters. They never talked about the bad things the Japanese or Nazis did to them to cause them to join the resistance. One guy was arrested, his family was murdered, but then he doesn't join the resistance he just makes a fake piece of Indian jewelry to make money from a naive Japanese couple who collects American cultural artifacts.

Also, the entire main plot about movies that showed an alternative universe where the Allies won the war was a reminder that this is an alternative universe story, and it really broke the fourth wall as far as I'm concerned, reminding us that what we are looking at isn't real, but that our world is the real one. This was reinforced at the end when a Japanese character simply teleported into our real world, where the Allies won World War II, and to make the stereotype all the more obvious, there was a newspaper headline about the Cuban Missle Crisis. Of course, because it's 1962 and that's the only thing that happened in 1962 according to Hollywood.

 

[Kat]

But, this was not supposed to be your typical Nazi Japanese movie.


We GUESS he teleported. I will watch season 2 to find out. I have heard many theories.

 

[Kat]

I think maybe you were looking for something different than I was. I was glad to see it not be a typical WW2 thing.

 

[Gracie]

I don't have amazon. Just netflix. Sounds like something I wouldn't be interested in anyway.

 

[Kat]

I think you would Gracie I didn't think I would either, until someone talked me into watching. Then I was hooked. So was Mister Kat. It's not a war movie.
Yeah, it's on Amazon Prime.

 

[Skull Pilot]

I hate that alternate history crap

 

[Kat]

LOL That isn't what is was either.

 

[Blackrook]

Alternative history is perhaps the most boring of science fiction concepts, because it portrays a world that is similar to our own, with only one change being that the Axis won World War II, or the Roman Empire survived to the 20th century, etc. The Axis won the war has been done many times in many different stories, but once you have that as a baseline premise, you still have to have an interesting plot, and The Man in the High Castle does not have an interesting plot.